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[3liteDragon]

Secret ‘Batgirl’ Screenings Hit the Warner Bros. Lot (Exclusive)

The cancelled DC film is getting "funeral screenings" before footage is put under lock and key.

www.hollywoodreporter.com

The cancelled DC film is getting "funeral screenings" before footage is put under lock and key.

Batgirl won’t be flying onto HBO Max screens, but a select group of insiders is getting to see the film during secret screenings on the Warner Bros. lot this week, multiple sources tell The Hollywood Reporter. They are said to be for people who worked on the movie, both cast and crew, as well as representatives and executives. One source described them as “funeral screenings,” held before the film is sent off to an undisclosed afterlife, with footage locked away in a vault, either physical or digital.

On Aug. 2, Batgirl became the most talked-about film in the world when news broke that new Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav had opted to scrap the $90 million DC film in order to take a tax write-down. (The CEO of the newly merged company is seeking $3 billion in cost savings.) Batgirl was deep in postproduction when Warners canceled the project but was still far from complete, with temp visual effects and score. The film had previously held a single test screening, the only time members of the public saw a cut. One question swirling around Batgirl is whether it could become the next Zack Snyder’s Justice League, an abandoned film that later sees the light of day. But Batgirl is different for multiple reasons, sources note. Justice League was not a tax write-down for the studio. It was released in theaters, and there was no legal reason an alternate version could not exist down the road. If the studio were to release Batgirl, it would run afoul of rules that allow Warner Bros. Discovery to claim a tax-write down.

What’s more, filmmakers Adil El Arbi and Bilall Fallah say they do not personally have access to any footage, though sources say it’s possible some players connected to the project may have footage on personal drives. In contrast, when Snyder left Justice League in the spring of 2017, he departed the Warners lot with a laptop containing a rough, four-hour cut of the film, one he later would complete after a years-long campaign from fans demanding to see his version of the film. Generally, a studio will not get the full tax write-down immediately on a money-losing project, but rather will get a certain percentage right away and the rest over a period of years. That’s because it’s unclear how much a project might make (or lose) over its lifetime as it hits cable and other platforms.

Several sources suggested that Warners might make the drastic move of actually destroying its Batgirl footage as a way to demonstrate to the IRS that there will never be any revenue from the project, and thus it should be entitled to the full write-down immediately. Other sources dispute that notion, noting that there are other projects that still have footage locked away that will never see the light of day, such as HBO’s first Game of Thrones spinoff pilot, Bloodmoon, an hour of television that not even author George R.R. Martin has seen. There is also the possibility that Warners could, down the road, decide Batgirl is worth releasing and pay back the government its tax liability.

Leslie Grace starred as Barbara Gordon/Batgirl in the film, which was supposed to be one of several modestly budgeted DC projects made directly for HBO Max as part of former WarnerMedia CEO Jason Kilar’s push to juice the streaming service. Zaslav, who took the reins of the combined company in April, has reversed that strategy and is pushing Warners back to a focus on theatrical first. While Batgirl has nabbed the most attention for being killed, it wasn’t the only film that fell victim to Zaslav’s tax write-down strategy.

Scoob! Holiday Haunt, another nearly completed film that was canceled the same day as Batgirl, quietly had its own funeral screening on the Warners lot last week.

 

[ManaByte]

Several sources suggested that Warners might make the drastic move of actually destroying its Batgirl footage

They should get someone with experience destroying the negatives of a superhero movie to do it.

 

[Hari Seldon]

Why do they get a tax break for voluntarily not releasing this? Can I claim a 3 billion dollar tax break because I have a secret movie under lock and key?

 

[ManaByte]

Why do they get a tax break for voluntarily not releasing this? Can I claim a 3 billion dollar tax break because I have a secret movie under lock and key?

It's some kind of loophole involved with the merger which expired last week so they had to do it before then.

 

[Kilau]

Why do they get a tax break for voluntarily not releasing this? Can I claim a 3 billion dollar tax break because I have a secret movie under lock and key?

 

[jason10mm]

100 bucks says a VERY well recorded "phone cam" version gets out so WB can claim they buried it for taxes.

 

[trikster40]

100 bucks says a VERY well recorded "phone cam" version gets out so WB can claim they buried it for taxes.

I’m hoping someone manages to do it just to spite WB. Let it get out in the wild!

I was never going to pay for a movie ticket to see the film but was definitely going to watch it on HBO Max. I was excited to see Keaton as Batman again.

 

[Fake]

Still doing this? It's hilarious Twitter users telling for centuries for people to 'move on' in everything, but they can't never move on.

 

[Pagusas]

Didn't the director come out today saying the film was no where near done? That they hadn't even finished the reshoots needed and their was ZERO effects work done? They didn't even have a full edit of the film done supposedly.

 

[AJUMP23]

Somebody release this kraken.

 

[AV]

Didn't the director come out today saying the film was no where near done? That they hadn't even finished the reshoots needed and their was ZERO effects work done? They didn't even have a full edit of the film done supposedly.

Oh my god, now I want to see it twice as much, with every effect missing.

 

[MastaKiiLA]

This only raises the intrigue. I wonder if the hashtag for this could ever reach Snyder Cut territory. I'm legit interested in seeing what was so bad about this film that it was better as a write-off. This just screams "so bad it's good".

 

[AJUMP23]

I really just want to see the Keaton scenes, but I would watch this whole uncompleted film for that bit.

 

[EverydayBeast]

When it comes to the decision to release a movie or not it’s always “why didn’t it get released?”.

 

[sinnergy]

Didn't the director come out today saying the film was no where near done? That they hadn't even finished the reshoots needed and their was ZERO effects work done? They didn't even have a full edit of the film done supposedly.

But that one guy that probably knows jack shit about film making didnt like it .. didn’t you get the memo

 

[Heimdall_Xtreme]

So the footage, would it be like the missing link of Hollywood?

 

[Soodanim]

This makes me think they're trying to get artificial Snyder Cut hype. The tax thing seems more likely to be a primary thing, but this could happen farther down the line.

 

[dr_octagon]

Release the #Salvagecut

 

[Halo is Back]

I feel like this has the potential to be a genius marketing ploy. Make everyone so curious about the quality of the film after canceling it and then releasing it later down the line. I would personally love to see how much of a train wreck it is.

 

[MrMephistoX]

I feel like this has the potential to be a genius marketing ploy. Make everyone so curious about the quality of the film after canceling it and then releasing it later down the line. I would personally love to see how much of a train wreck it is.

Can’t be any worse than this WB “Klassic”

 

[March Climber]

100 bucks says a VERY well recorded "phone cam" version gets out so WB can claim they buried it for taxes.

It can't be any worse than that time people somehow leaked a full version of X-men Origins Wolverine without the effects finished. Tarnished my view of a movie that was already bad enough to begin with.

 

[jason10mm]

It can't be any worse than that time people somehow leaked a full version of X-men Origins Wolverine without the effects finished. Tarnished my view of a movie that was already bad enough to begin with.

From what I remember of Origins the claw effect looked like someone drew them on to the negative with a silver crayon, so you might have seen the finished product

But yeah, unfinished stuff without effects, sound, or music is so lackluster I'm surprised folks can bear to watch it.

 

[DragoonWalker]

100 bucks says a VERY well recorded "phone cam" version gets out so WB can claim they buried it for taxes.

I’m hoping someone manages to do it just to spite WB. Let it get out in the wild!

I was never going to pay for a movie ticket to see the film but was definitely going to watch it on HBO Max. I was excited to see Keaton as Batman again.

Somebody release this kraken.

All it takes is someone to sneak into the backlot vaults. Somebody's gotta do it!

 

[theclaw135]

Batgirl meh. Can we have a home video release of the 48 FPS Hobbit trilogy as originally filmed please, WB?